The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on news from around the WoW community. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? Email TheClassifieds@wow.com.
The road to level 85 will be paved with gold for one lucky guild being financed by a member who’s earned 1 million gold in the past six months. Reader Villainus managed to crank his bank account up to 1 million gold last week. His ultimate goal? Sharing the wealth. “I’m not selling anything, not advertising on my site … just did it for the challenge,” he wrote to WoW.com. “My plans so far are to help my guild power level to 85 for Cataclysm with basically unlimited funds. 
”
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Lawsuits aren’t necessarily a fact of life in the world of video games, but they seem to be a bit favored over words when two parties just can’t seem to get along. David Allen, the gentleman formerly in charge of Alganon’s development, has opted for legal action in the matter of his removal from the company, which was followed by Derek Smart taking his position. While Smart has responded to Allen on his personal blog, Quest Online has taken the opportunity to attempt to put the record straight in a more official capacity.
According to the official statement, “the company’s members, forced to make a decision between David Allen and Derek Smart, unanimously voted to remove Mr. Allen as managing member thereby leaving Derek Smart as President of the company.” Those who have been following the debate since the beginning will note that this matches Smart’s depiction of events. The company states that it will defend itself against untrue allegations by Mr. Allen, and that they are confident the courts will see that there were no unfair actions taken on their part. The unfolding legal drama certainly has succeeded in stirring up more interest in Alganon, but only time will tell how the legal side will play out.
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Publisher NHN Corporation is poised to release the new free-to-play MMORPG Karos Online in Europe and the US on April 9th, following an extensive beta testing period. The game will launch with two public server shards and a brand new cash shop to give players a freely customizable experience. The Karos servers will be brought down on April 5th to prepare for the launch, along with a planned website outage. The website will be brought back up prior to the launch to run daily contests in order to win in-game prizes on launch day.
Karos Online is the product of developer Galaxy Gate, makers of other free-to-play games such as Last Chaos and Laghaim (known as Savage Eden in the West). Karos offers players a free-to-play experience including an economic system involving indepth crafting skills and a consignment market for player trading. Galaxy Gate promises a wide variety of classes and skills and a dynamic dungeon system with shifting passages. It also touts an elaborate PvP system, with guild-based objective-oriented gameplay including castle sieges and control point captures.
Karos Online also features impressive visual effects, particularly given its relatively low system requirements. Gameplay videos have been released, showcasing the visuals as well as various gameplay aspects.
You can download the client now and try out the game while it’s still in open beta. Check it out — and make sure to visit their website daily for free contests and prizes on the countdown to launch!
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ArenaNet has released the third of four slideshows of Guild Wars 2 concept art that was presented at GDC nearly two weeks ago, and all is not lovely and idyllic in the land of Tyria.
This newest video gives us a look at what are presumably Orrian undead, as well as a decaying ship and something huge brandishing a pair of severed heads. The video runs the full spectrum, however, and the architecture, armor art and newborn Sylvari scenes provide a beautiful contrast to some of the older areas. We enjoyed a peek at details of all five playable races, and art ranging from basic creature sketches to some fully fleshed-out areas that are beginning to look familiar to us.
The technical difficulties — now fixed — in part two gave us a new appreciation for the music and sound effects added in, and this round is just as impressive as the last two, and — hey, wait a minute, what was that at the end? Follow along after the jump to see for yourself!
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Remember when Blizzard first offered the Lil KT and Pandaren Monk pets on the Blizzard Store a few months ago? They mentioned that they would be donating half the proceeds from the sales of the Pandaren Monk in game non combat pet to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Selling at $10 per account, the Pandaren Monk managed to raise a whopping $1.1 million which was donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation on February 16. This figure was based on the November-December sales of the cute little pet.
The Make-A-Wish Foundation is a non profit organization that grants wishes to children with life threatening conditions. Blizzard has had dealings with the foundation in the past with the famous case of the late Ezra Chatterton. Chatterton, who passed away in 2008, was suffering from a brain tumor when the make-A-Wish Foundation granted his wish to be a Game Developer in the game that he loved the most. Chatterton is responsible for the Merciless Gladiator Crossbow of the Phoenix, named after his WoW character Ephoenix. He is also responsible for a quest in Mulgore involving an NPC that even uses his own voice. Since it’s the Lunar Festival now, you can also see him immortalized as Elder Ezra Wheathoof in Thunder Bluff!
So if you bought a Pandaren Monk in November or December, you can be proud to have contributed to this fine cause!
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The Lunar Festival runs this year from Sunday, Feburary 14th at 9:00 am server time through Sunday, March 7th at 9:00 am server time. That’s right, folks; you’ve got three weeks to get everything done. The basics of the holiday involve talking to a number of Elders to honor them, receiving Coins of Ancestry in return, and then using the Coins to purchase fun holiday items. The To Honor One’s Elders meta-achievement is also a requirement for What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been. In general, this is not a difficult holiday, but it is time-consuming; you’ll need to hunt down a lot of NPCs. Because of the mileage you’ll rack up doing this, it’d be a good time to do World Explorer if you haven’t already done that, or pick up flight paths that a character doesn’t yet have.
We’ve updated and expanded our 2010 guide to include exact coordinates for every Elder in the game, and I’ve also arranged them in what I hope to be the most straightforward way to reach them all. Let’s get started.
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When Blizzard put all characters below level 10 on easy-mode and added the tutorials in patch 3.3, I thought that was because they were expecting a huge influx of new players for the holidays. But I was wrong. CEO Mike Morhaime stated in the quarterly conference call for investors yesterday that only 30% of all Trial Accounts make it past level 10. This would account for the priority of making the beginning of the game new player friendly, over other development we veteran players would like to have seen. He goes on to say that the changes to the leveling game in Cataclysm will be good for retaining new players while giving better replay value for the rest of us.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. How many of those trial accounts are scammers, so of course they don’t make it to level 10? Good point. I don’t know the numbers, though I’m sure Blizzard could just look at how many of those accounts made character names by facerolling. However, the account thieves aren’t strapped for cash and have been known to not only purchase full accounts to do their evil bidding; but will also reactivate lapsed accounts, slap an Authenticator on and farm/scam away. So the 70% may very well include a large percentage of potential subscribers by process of elimination, since the scammers can afford multiple accounts.
As I’ve said before, the pre-level 10 changes we already have help us introduce our loved ones to the game. And I think we’re all looking forward to the new starting zones and leveling experiences we’ll find in Cataclysm. Particularly now that we’ve had a taste of the new quest mechanics in the Love is in the Air quests, such as PIlfering Perfume and Hot on the Trail.
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See, this is what happens when we let Seccia write titles for us. Ughs… sorry about that readers. We don’t proclaim any victory, nor do we have any rage towards the citizens of Norrath or EverQuest II. We are, as always, unbiased in our viewpoints… unlike some new Dark Elven interns.
However, Seccia has noted that we’ve received a package today from a member of her elven bretheren, a certain community management elf by the name of Kiara. Enclosed were two pieces of a shattered tablet, one named “Victory” while the other was entitled “Rage.” We’re not sure what this whole thing will form once it’s put together, but we do know that other fansites have more pieces of the tablet. (Oh, Dark Elves and their puzzles.)
We’ve put the pictures of victory and rage after the break, so good luck with assembling the tablet and we can’t wait to see what it reveals!
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The following realms will be undergoing maintenance tomorrow from 5:00 a.m. PST / 8:00 a.m. EST until 9:00 a.m. PST / Noon EST. There is no indication given as to why the maintenance is occurring, but there have been widespread reports of lag and instance problems tonight. Common lag bugs like looting taking several seconds to complete or mobs rapidly changing places have been reported on quite a few realms.
If this outage turns into something more, we’ll update this post.
The realms affected by the maintenance include:
Antonidas
Cairne
Drak’Tharon
Drenden
Farstriders
Garrosh
Hydraxis
Mok’Nathal
Moon Guard
Nazgrel
Nordrassil
Quel’dorei
Rivendare
Shandris
Tortheldrin
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According to The Associated Press, 23 year old Christopher H. Bouffard accepted $760 in 2008 from at least two people in exchange for WoW accounts. Bouffard then failed to turn over the agreed upon accounts, leading to a police investigation. He has now been charged with two counts of grand theft and one count of scheming to defraud. Bouffard is currently being held in jail until he is able to post a $20,000 bail.
While defrauding people and taking their money isn’t anything new, getting busted over it while selling WoW accounts is. From what we understand, the arrest is not for the actual trading and selling of accounts, but for the fraud that went on in the process. The fraud in this case is a criminal matter with very real implications for Mr. Bouffard, whereas the buying and selling of WoW accounts is against the agreed upon Terms of Service, but not against any criminal code.
We’ve been hearing a lot about misbehaving WoWers lately, from the cougar who ran off with a fifteen year old boy, to Blizzard helping international authorities track fugitives online. This appears to be just the latest in a string of cases for Jack “Hang ‘em High” McCoy to lay some law and order down on.
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When writing this Breakfast Topic I noticed in the comments a certain disconnect between how I approach running heroics and how other people seem to. So I thought I’d try and encapsulate the differences and try and help explain why sometimes tanks seem a little touchy or off in runs. It’s not just the blows to the head, guys.
For starters, I don’t run heroics because I want anything. Aside from a few DPS drops (trinkets, mostly) that I want as alternatives to trying to take them from a main spec DPS raider, there’s literally nothing in these instances I actually want. I don’t even really want the Emblems of Triumph. I blow those on gems because I can’t think of anything else to do with them. No, I generally run random heroics for one of two reasons.
Reason 1: someone asks me to tank so they can get into some heroics faster. This is usually a guildmate. Sometimes it’s multiple guildmates. Frankly, I prefer it when it’s four other guildmates and we can queue for randoms as a group, because then I know everyone and can more reliably expect what they’re going to do on pulls, I know who is a reliable Vigilance target, etc etc. But this doesn’t always happen, and to be fair, quite a few players we’ve picked up through the random system have been really nice people and good players.
Reason 2: I decided to sign up as DPS because I was bored but wanted to decompress. I get into the instance, and the tank is wearing mismatched epics selected more for their ability to get him into harder dungeons than their actual tanking viability. Sighing, not wanting to eat the 15 minute debuff, I grudgingly volunteer to tank said heroic after the tank dies three times trying to pull the trash packs in VH and I end up wearing a shield and using a two hander to tank anyway. If I’m going to do this, I want to have my good set of tools. I wouldn’t try and fix a sink with a chainsaw.
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We’d already noticed last week that the Authenticators in the US store had gone free shipping, but now official updates on Blizzard’s site say it’s true in the EU as well. American authenticators still cost $6.50, but you no longer have to pay anything extra for shipping, and EU authenticators have had their price dropped to €6.99. That’s still over $10, but they’re at least cheaper than they used to be. There’s a drawback, however: apparently they went with cheaper shipping, because you can no longer track shipments of authenticators, and shipping will take a little longer (up to 15 business days in the US). Which makes sense, given that you want these things as cheap as possible.
Ancilorn answers some other Authenticator questions as well — there’s no discount for buying multiple units at all; what you see is what you get. And while the only authenticator for purchase at the moment is the Corehound branded unit, there may be more art available in the future, and of course you don’t need a Corehound-branded Authenticator to get the Corehound Pup pet. Any Authenticator will do that, including any of the authenticators made for mobile phones, as long as it stays attached to your account. Whew — that should answer all the questions anyone has. As we said the other day, if you don’t have one of these yet, it’s probably time to look in to getting one. Not only will your account be more secure, but you’ll get that free pet as well.
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Looks like we’re in for a long maintenance period with a great reward for our patience this week, folks. Blizzard announced their window for this week’s scheduled downtime on the official forums, and given its length, we’ll be seeing Icecrown tomorrow after all.
Maintenance is scheduled to start at 1 AM PST/4 AM EST and end at 11 AM PST/2 PM EST. Given that this is a patch day, it’s likely that maintenance will be extended at least once, likely several times, meaning your forays into Icecrown might end up a little later than you expect. Just remember that this is the big one, the one we’ve been waiting for, and that you can wait a little bit longer.
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Simple true statement of the day: Patch 3.3 will not be released Tuesday November 24th, 2009.
Zarhym hopped on the fourms earlier this evening and said that the patch will not be dropping tomorrow, and that they don’t consider dropping a patch before a long holiday weekend something they want to do. We agree.
Zarhym goes on to say that he doesn’t prefer his day-after-thanksgiving turkey with cranberry sauce on it. That, ladies and gentleman, is a travesty. A total slap in the face to all us cranberry loving mortals out there. Is Zarhym really against cranberries because one day he ate too many cranberries, abused them, and then went on a cranberry induced rampage killing off entire swaths of AV players with his Martin Fury, only to laugh at and teabag everyone who tried to stop him?
I’m not saying he did, I’m just asking a question. Zarhym hasn’t given an answer, and without one, well… well, what can consider to be the truth then? I think you know the truth my beautiful Azeroth. I think you do. /tear.
Update 7:50 p.m. EDT: We’ve placed a red phone in the WoW.com HQ. It’s sitting right here. We’ve given the number to your chief of staff, Zarhym. You can call it and refute your Martin Fury incident anytime you want. Azeroth is waiting.
Update 9:45 p.m. EDT: WoW.com would like to apologize for its use of cranberry pictures from other, more popular, cranberry related events. We agree with Zarhym when he says that this is the time to put aside differences and put gravy on our turkey sandwiches, of course as long as the turkeys come from Azeroth. No Draenor turkeys for us.
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